Email Suggests FBI Could Target District Attorney

Email suggests FBI could target DA
The Albany Times Union by Bob Gardinier  -  November 1, 2011

TROY, NY -- A private e-mail sent by a special prosecutor to State Police investigators probing the Working Families Party ballot fraud case in Rensselaer County suggests District Attorney Richard McNally could become a target of the FBI.  In an email sent on Aug. 3, Special Prosecutor Trey Smith wrote that Special Agent Alexander McDonald seemed interested in investigating McNally. Smith wrote the email after a meeting about the ballot fraud case that has so far resulted in the indictment of Democrats Edward McDonough, a county elections commissioner, and Michael LoPorto, a city councilman, and the conviction of former Troy City Clerk William A. McInerney.  "Remember McDonald's last statement to me at the FBI -- he asked why we did not take a statement from McNally re: whether McInerney made any comments to him when he asked McNally for advice on who to choose as a lawyer," Smith wrote. He went on: "McDonald thinks he's got a career-maker in McNally; a crooked elected prosecutor is a much juicer target than an appointed elections commissioner."  The email is included in a legal brief McDonough's attorney, Brian Premo, filed in an effort to convince a judge to remove Smith from the case. The brief was filed on Friday.  "By raising this presumably false allegation against McNally, Premo can fashion a conspiracy defense on the case against McDonough," Smith wrote. "I am a friend of McNally's. We worked together as DAs, and I attend his Labor Day barbecue every year. Not real close, but close enough to smear me.  "Premo will point to that friendship, McNally's subsequent requests for my appointment and expansion of authority, the cooperation agreement with McInerney, and my comments with McDonough at our meeting and falsely claim that I am part of an effort to scapegoat McDonough."  Premo said that Smith wrote the e-mail in August to investigators assigned to the now two-year-old investigation after Premo made allegations of a cover-up in the investigation. Premo has repeatedly claimed that his client is a scapegoat taking the blame for higher-ups, including McNally.  "I strongly believe McNally is not involved, and that Premo is making all this up; I know that Premo has lied in this case, and done so under penalties of perjury," Smith's email says.  "Regardless of what I believe, each of us has to be open to the possibility, however slight, that McNally has committed a crime or crimes," Smith wrote.  "Maybe you both have already thought of these things, but it seems pretty clear to me that this is what's going on, and you both need to think long and hard and draw your own conclusions about how to proceed going forward.''  McNally has not been publicly named as a target in the probe, though there are allegations of ballot rigging in 2007, the year he narrowly won election.  The email surfaced at a time when McNally, a Democrat, is trying to win re-election. His Republican opponent, Joel Abelove, said Tuesday that he has asked for a federal investigation.  "This revelation throws a pall and a shadow over the 2007 election of the district attorney,'' Abelove said at a press conference in front of the Rensselaer County Courthouse. "These are extremely troubling revelations about the DA and he needs to step up and be candid about this.''  But McNally said Abelove was using an untrue allegation to smear him.  "This is speculation and innuendo of guilt by association only,'' McNally said of Abelove's claims. "It's vulgar gutter politics and I took this job to end such practices.'  "The only thing this proves is that the special prosecutor was doing his job and keeping an open mind to anything going on,'' McNally said.  Reach Bob Gardinier at 454-5696 or bgardinier@timesunion.com